'Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon' goes back to the future

We can’t say game over, man, to the 1980s. One way or another, they’ll be back.

Not quite a sequel but much more than a simple add-on, Ubisoft Montreal’s Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon takes the core experience of last year’s fantastic Far Cry 3 and sheathes it in a neon-hued, synthesizer-driven ode to the action movies and video games of the ’80s and early ’90s.

It’s bizarre and funny and quite unlike anything that’s been done before by a major video game studio. And for the most part, it works.

A standalone downloadable game available for about $15, Blood Dragon is set in post-apocalyptic 2007 as it might have been imagined on the box art of a Sega Genesis game. As cyber-commando Sgt. Rex “Power” Colt, voiced by ’80s action icon Michael Biehn (The Terminator), players must liberate an island from the grip of Rex’s former commander, Col. Ike Sloan, who plans to take over the world with his army of cyber-soldiers, mutant critters and a cache of nuclear missiles.

The irreverent tone is set early on with a tutorial that gleefully prods the fourth wall, and Biehn is awesomely, profanely growly as Rex Colt – imagine Aliens’ Cpl. Hicks after chugging a cocktail of gravel and finishing nails – deadpanning lines like, “It’s Sloan’s bedtime, and I plan to tuck him in. Under six feet of dirt.”

Warning: Trailer contains coarse language!

From its VCR-mimicking loading screens to the synth-heavy soundtrack to a plot that references everything from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Mortal Kombat to The Empire Strikes Back, the game simultaneously skewers and celebrates ’80s pop culture. It also streamlines the Far Cry 3 experience to maximize the amount of time players spend shooting at stuff, ditching some of the original game’s less-critical elements: there are no radio towers to climb, no crafting items from plants and animal pelts, and upgrades to Rex’s abilities and weapons are earned simply by completing missions and earning “Cyber Points” in combat.

In this spirit of making the game faster and twitchier, the half-man, half-machine Rex can sprint at superhuman speeds, swim underwater indefinitely and doesn’t take damage from tumbling off a cliff or bailing out of hang glider. He’s a cyber-commando, after all, not some dudebro on an island vacation.

Rex’s arsenal of toys is sparser than what players had access to in Far Cry 3, and range from a RoboCop-inspired pistol to a neon blue, uh, cyber-bow. A powerful end-game weapon does offer something a bit different, but most of the gun changes are cosmetic.

But the titular blood dragons – mutant mini-Godzillas that roam the island and can shoot frickin’ laser beams from their eyes – are powerful foes. Taking them on head-to-head is a white-knuckle affair, but luring one into an enemy garrison and watching it wreak havoc on a troop of cyborg soldiers is great fun.

It’s all slickly presented, right down to the 16-bit cinematic cutscenes that faithfully mimic the games of yesteryear, but by the time players have settled into a routine of liberating garrisons, rescuing scientists and hunting rare mutant animals, the delicious novelty of the whole self-aware premise gets a bit stale.

Which might not be so bad if the game world wasn’t so dark. Like, literally dark. The idea of re-skinning Far Cry 3’s tropics in shades of hot neon was brilliant, but the island as a whole is shrouded in eternal post-apocalyptic gloom. Compared to the sun-baked vistas of Far Cry 3, this world feels oppressive and uninviting.

And maybe the rich vein of ’80s source material could have been more deeply mined than it is, and maybe the variety of things to do could have been expanded without hobbling the game’s pace. Or maybe that’s way too much to ask of a $15 game created in just six months.

Still, Blood Dragon is a clever idea confidently executed. Fans of Far Cry 3’s gameplay who also have a nostalgic soft spot for ’80s entertainment will find much to love about it, even if the game’s core conceit wears a tad thin.

And it may serve as a gateway drug for those who have yet to experience the amazing Far Cry 3 itself, although I’d be curious to know what players would make of that game’s more deliberate and story-driven pace, compared to the balls-out, goofy mayhem of Blood Dragon.

Either way, Ubisoft Montreal’s bold experiment in creating a laser-spewing mutant hybrid of a game should please even a power-mad ’80s movie villain. And now we can’t wait to see Assassin’s Creed II: Electric Boogaloo.